James Brolin led an ensemble cast primarily playing the roles of passengers and crew aboard an airliner.

It was the film debut for several actors and actresses, including Susan Dey and Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier.

Captain Hank O'Hara (Charlton Heston) believes it may be a hoax, but when a second lipstick threat is left on a stewardess's serving tray he is convinced to follow its instructions: "Bomb on plane divert to Anchorage, Alaska.

His radar shows the airliner on a collision course with a small plane with evident radio failure, but Flight 502 has too little fuel for a go around.

Once on the ground passengers attempt to disarm Weber, a Vietnam veteran driven insane by war trauma, but he brandishes a pistol then manages to fend them off.

While he’s occupied there bossing everyone around, the lead stewardess (Yvette Mimieux) oversees the escape of the economy-class passengers by emergency slide.

Senator (Walter Pidgeon) and a pregnant woman (Mariette Hartley) who has gone into premature labor due to the crisis.

The aircraft is surrounded by aggressive Soviet fighter jets, which eventually escort the plane to the Moscow airport.

Weber, who had nursed fantasies of being received by the Soviets as a hero, is jubilant to have seemingly achieved his dreams and gloats to O'Hara that he never even had a bomb.

When he realizes the Soviet forces have deployed to attack rather than welcome him, he straps on a bandolier of grenades and produces an automatic weapon.

[10] Then still current Air National Guard North American F-100 Super Sabres of the 188th Fighter Squadron were painted as the Soviet interceptors.

[13] In 2020 Filmink called it "is a solid piece of classical entertainment which is one of the best movies made at MGM under the regime of James Aubrey...Charlton Heston was born to play a pilot.

"[14] Paul Mavis writing for Movies & Drinks in 2022 appreciated its non-glossy approach to the disaster genre: "This is a straightforward, simple, mean little suspense thriller, extremely well-told by director John Guillermin and screenwriter Stanley R. Greenberg, and unpretentiously unembellished.